Question

Randy is walking home from school. According to the diagram above, what is his total distance from school to home? Show your work and include units. If he had a jet pack, would you use distance or displacement? Why?

Answer 1

Answer and Step-by-step explanation:

The first thing is we can see in the image, when he walks, that between the house and his school he has to walk four times a distance of 0.5 km. The result of this is a total of 4¨*0.5 km = 2 km. The second thing is that he must walk 2 kilometers. On the other hand, if he has a jetpack, he can simply take the shorter path by ignoring all the buildings. This idea is where we can draw a triangular rectangle on the map in a way so that the hypotenuse of the triangle is the distance between the school and the home. As for the Catheti, it is a vertical distance which in this case is two blocks of 0.5 km. The result is that these catheti have a length of 2*0.5 km = 1 km. The other is the distance of the horizontal line, which is 1 km. The absolute distance of this path is given by Pythagorean's theorem, which is A^2 + B^2 = H^2. Here, A and B are the cathetus, and H is the hypotenuse, then, H^2 = 1 km^2 + 1 km^2. As well, H = (√2)km = 1.41 km. Currently, in the situation where he has a jetpack, he can literally fly to the school utilizing this hypotenuse line for the path he would need to follow. For this specific situation, the displacement, and the distance would be the exact same. The reason for this is that the definitions of displacement and distance are displacement is the difference between the final position and the initial position and distance is how much area an item has covered. Also, when he walks, the distance is 2 km and the displacement is 1.41 km. Also, when he utilizes the jet pack, the distance is equal to the displacement. Both of these are 1.41 km.

Answer 2

First, when he walks, we can see in the image that between the school and his house he must walk 4 times a distance of 0.5km, so this is a total of 4¨*0.5km = 2km.

Then he needs to walk 2km.

Now if he has a jet-pack, he can ignore the buildings and just take the shorter path, here we can draw a triangle rectangle, in such a way that the hypotenuse of this triangle is the distance between the home and the school.

One of the catheti is the vertical distance (two blocks of 0.5km, so this catheti has a length of 2*0.5km = 1km), and the other one is the horizontal distance, also 1km.

The actual distance of this path is given by the Pythagorean's theorem:

A^2 + B^2 = H^2

Where A and B are the cathetus, and H is the hypotenuse, then:

H^2 = 1km^2 + 1km^2

H = (√2)km = 1.41km.

Now, in the case that he has a jet-pack, he can actually go to the school using this hypotenuse line as his path, in this case the distance and the displacement would be the same.

This is because the definitions of distance and displacement are:

Distance: "how much ground an object has covered"

Displacement: "Difference between the final position and the initial position"

When he walks, the distance is 2km and the displacement is 1.41km , but when he uses the jet pack, the distance is equal to the displacement, both are 1.41km.